Criticism of Apple Inc.

Intellectual property enforcement

Apple has faced criticism for its aggressive enforcement of intellectual property (IP) rights, including legal actions challenging various trademark applications. For example, The New York Times reported that Apple opposed trademarks such as a logo featuring three interlocking apples used by the Appleton Area School District, and a podcast named "Talk About Apples" created by an Atlanta-based artist. The company has also objected to trademark filings by Apple Urgent Care in California, artist Franki Pineapple, DOPi (a company that makes laptop bags and phone cases) for the lowercase i, and Woolworths Supermarkets, whose "W" logo resembles an apple.[8][9] Critics have described these enforcement actions as examples of corporate overreach, with The New York Times describing Apple's strategy as "bullying" and NBC News as "lunacy".[10][11] In 2023, Apple sought IP rights over apple-related imagery in Switzerland, which drew further scrutiny over its approach to trademark enforcement.[12] Smaller competitors told the United States Congress in 2020 that such "bullying" drives them out of business, stifling competition.[13][14] The Register wrote in 2006 that Apple "sues itself in the foot" for a lawsuit against a community site for deep linking to the MacBook Pro service manual claiming the site infringed on their IP rights.[15] Apple has pursued civil and criminal action against blogs over IP to maintain its culture of secrecy.

Vendor lock-in practices

Apple has been criticized for the use of proprietary parts, thereby hindering self‑repair and independent servicing.[16][17] Apple has similarly faced controversy for having proprietary content ecosystems where the corporation gets to set unilateral policy. These proprietary services include the iTunes music and the App Store where it gets to unilaterally determine what content will be hosted, margins, and pricing.[18][19]

Investigating leaks and tracking lost prototypes

Apple aggressively investigates potential leaks and prosecutes and litigates against employees who are caught.[36][37][38][39][40] In 2004, Apple sued several unnamed employees for leaking confidential information to two blogs. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) opposed Apple’s request for discovery of the blogs’ sources, and in 2006 the court of appeals sided with the EFF.[41] In 2009, the strict secrecy drew ire from the public after a worker who lost a device died by suicide.[42]

In 2009, Gizmodo published an article titled, "Apple Gestapo: How Apple Hunts Down Leaks," which detailed Apple's Worldwide Loyalty Team responsible for tracking down leaks and lost prototypes.[43][44][45] Employees reportedly called the team the Gestapo, named after Nazi Germany's secret police. When the team suspects a leak, suspected departments are put on lockdown, searched, and asked to hand over their devices and sign non-disclosure agreements or face disciplinary action up to termination. Gizmodo and ZDNET compared the practice to George Orwell's novel 1984.[43][46][44] ZDNET referred to the operations as "raids" and characterized them as "quite scary."[46]

In 2010, a Reuters reporter was assaulted while taking photos outside of a Foxconn plant during an investigation.[47][48] Later that year, Apple obtained a search warrant to raid a Gizmodo blogger's home in search of an iPhone prototype that was purchased from someone who found it at a bar. The man who found it at the bar was charged with theft[49] and the blogger was cleared of all charges.[50] The New York Times described Apple's response to the events as "churlish".[51] CNN argued that constitutionally and under the Law of California, the district attorney should have issued a subpoena instead of a search warrant.[52] Columbia Journalism Review published an article about Apple's aggressive behavior toward journalists to maintain secrecy, referencing the Gizmodo case, but also three lawsuits Apple filed against bloggers for reporting on leaked trade secrets.[53]

The following year, Wired reported that Apple employees allegedly posed as San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) officers to search a home for a lost iPhone prototype left at a bar, which Apple tracked with GPS.[54] Four plain-clothed SFPD officers accompanied two Apple investigators to the home. Three officers flashed their badges and announced they were the police, but the investigators did not identify themselves as Apple employees. The resident presumed they were all officers and allowed the investigators to search the home.[55] The resident did not know anything about the device. One Apple investigator was later identified as a former police sergeant. No report was ever filed and there is no public record of the visit.[56][57] Time and The New York Times referred to the incident as "sketchy" and Time asked, "Does Apple have its own secret mafia?"[58][55]

Employees have said that Apple's secrecy policies conflate legally-protected speech such as working conditions with protecting product development.[20][21] The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) made a statement that Apple's rules and communication around secrecy violate federal labor laws after a recording of an employee townhall, which detailed workplace conditions, was leaked to the press. Tim Cook sent employees follow-up memo that said they were doing "everything in our power to identify those who leaked," that "people who leak confidential information do not belong here," and "whether it’s product IP or the details of a confidential meeting."[59][60][61] An employee who asked questions at the townhall and was known for activism at the company was investigated for the leak and subsequently fired after she deleted materials from her work devices.[62][63]

AI training data sources and transparency

In 2005, four voice actors, including Susan Bennett, made voice recordings as part of a database owned by Scansoft and licensed by Apple. None of them were compensated or told what the project was for.[64][65]

In 2017, Apple announced Face ID as a neural network technology that was private and safe because it was stored locally on the device and never uploaded to the cloud.[66][67][68] The Verge questioned Apple's intent for future uses of the data.[69] Minnesota senator Al Franken questioned the privacy and security implications, asking about the source of Apple’s facial training data (reported to exceed one billion images), the diversity of the dataset, and how Apple planned to respond to law‑enforcement requests for facial data. Apple noted in their response, "We worked with participants from around the world to include a representative group of people accounting for gender, age, ethnicity and other factors," and that studies were conducted with informed consent.[67][70] In August 2021, The Verge published "Apple cares about privacy, unless you work at Apple," which detailed an internal tool called "Glimmer" (formerly "Gobbler") employees used to test Face ID. One employee later suggested the billion images came from Apple's dogfooding,[71] a practice CEO Steve Jobs started in the 1980s.[72] In 2020, Apple said they 3D scanned hundreds of ears for the development of the AirPods in user studies which invited participation of Apple employees.[73][74]

In 2024, Apple announced the introduction of its generative artificial intelligence feature, Apple Intelligence. The company came under criticism from some artists and publishers who expressed concern about a lack of transparency in the sources used for AI training data. According to Apple, data collection is conducted using its proprietary web crawler, AppleBot, which is designed to respect publisher preferences set in robots.txt files. However, some media outlets have questioned the effectiveness of this opt-out system, arguing that it places the responsibility on publishers and questioning whether data can be fully retracted from training sets once collected.[75] CNN criticized the procedure saying it places the burden on publishers to safeguard their data from Apple.[76] Earlier in the year, Apple apologized for a "dystopian" advertisement for the iPad, which crushed art tools and musical instruments with a hydraulic press, after the ad was widely criticized by artists.[77]

Copyright and patent infringement

In 2012, multiple groups of Chinese writers were awarded compensation of over $200,000 from Apple for hosting apps that contained unlicensed versions of their books, according to Chinese state media.[78][79][80] Also in 2012, a US district judge ruled that Apple infringed on The Tetris Company's copyrights when it cloned Tetris into a game called Mino.[81]

In 2023, Dan Ackerman sued Apple alleging that the film Tetris copied material from his 2016 book The Tetris Effect.[82]

In 2022 and 2023, the United States International Trade Commission ruled that Apple had infringed on health company AliveCor's electrocardiogram technology and Masimo's blood oxygen sensor patent on the Apple Watch.[83][84] AliveCor's antitrust lawsuit was dismissed in 2024.[85][86]

Device scanning and recording

In 2019, Apple contractor Thomas le Bonniec filed complaints with European privacy regulators and went to the press with allegations that Apple had been recording, storing, and using audio of its consumers without their knowledge or consent using Siri.[87][88][89] In 2020, Apple apologized and suspended the program.[90] They were ordered to pay $95 million to settle a class action lawsuit related to the practice.[91]

In 2022, Apple scrapped a plan to scan iCloud for child pornography, which received widespread criticism for its privacy and surveillance implications.[92][93]

Privacy and surveillance

Corporate employees have criticized Apple's employee privacy rules, including a rule that says that employees have "no expectation of privacy" when using a personal device to conduct Apple-related business. They also spoke out about a practice of being discouraged from keeping a separate device for work and are expected to test software with informed consent.[127][128][129] Retail employees involved in unionizing used Android phones due to surveillance concerns from software Apple installs on employee devices and practices such as bag checks.[130][131][132] An employee filed a lawsuit against the company in California in December 2024 for its employee privacy practices.[133]

Diversity, equity, and inclusion

Apple has been criticized for a lack of diversity[134] and a culture of sexual harassment and mishandling of complaints by human resources and management.[135][136][137] In particular, wage gaps and the failure to promote women into leadership have been criticized since the early 1990s.[138][139][137] In 2022, Apple removed concealment clauses from its employment agreements after a practice of offering severance in exchange for non-disclosure agreements was reported by Financial Times, corroborated by a third-party audit, and reported to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.[136][140][141] Employees remarked that it was a part of Apple's culture of secrecy.[142] A gender pay bias and sexual harassment lawsuit was filed in June 2024 seeking class status.[143]

Contract manufacturers

Apple manufactures most of its products in China through partners like Foxconn. Apple's decision to outsource its manufacturing has received significant criticism, due to allegations of poor working conditions, long work hours, and other labor rights violations.[144][145] A total of 18 suicide attempts were recorded at the Foxconn facility in 2010, with 14 attempts resulting in deaths.[146][147][148] At least one suicide was due to the company's culture of secrecy after the worker lost a prototype.[40] The Guardian reported that an audit of Apple’s supply chain found that two‑thirds of its factories did not properly compensate workers, lacked adequate safety and environmental credentials, and included several instances of 15‑year‑old workers.[149]

Apple, Foxconn and Chinese workers are stakeholders in high-technology production, but relations between the three are perceived by analysts as imbalanced. Apple was able to capture 58.5 percent of the value of the iPhone, despite the fact that the manufacture of the product is entirely outsourced. Particularly notable is that labor costs in China account for the smallest share: 1.8 percent, or nearly US$10, of the US$549 retail price. While both Apple and Foxconn rely on Chinese workers to perform 12-hour working days to meet demand, the costs of Chinese labor in processing and assembly are insignificant in the overall commercial success of Apple. Other major component providers—such as Samsung and LG—captured slightly over 14 percent of the value of the iPhone, while the cost of raw materials was just over one-fifth of the total value (21.9 percent).[150]

In 2020, The Information published "Apple Took Three Years to Cut Ties With Supplier That Used Underage Labor,"[151] an article which detailed the company's reluctance to sever partnerships in their supply chain, even when they violate its ethics policies using child labor.[152] Also in 2020, report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute listed Apple as a company that was "potentially directly or indirectly benefiting" from forced Uyghur labor.[153] In 2020, Apple lobbyists tried to weaken the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, a U.S. bill against forced labor in Xinjiang, China.[154]

Conflict minerals and cobalt suppliers

An Amnesty International report on cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo linked Apple to suppliers using child labor, some children as young as seven in 2016.[155] The following year, The Washington Post reported Apple's intention to stop buying cobalt from the region until conditions were improved.[156] Victims of child labor in the cobalt mines attempted to sue Apple and other technology companies, but were dismissed by the courts on procedural grounds.[157] In 2023, an investigation into corporate technology supply chains carried out by The Independent found that Apple was among 400 companies associated with the Responsible Minerals Initiative (RMI) to root out child labor and human rights violations. Issues reported ranged from mines burying workers alive—including children—to sexual assault and birth defects caused by exposure to toxins. RMI said that the audits do not include site visits, despite being aware of the conditions at mines. Siddharth Kara, author of Cobalt Red, told The Independent, "there’s not much happening of any merit to assist the people of the Congo in addressing the human rights and environmental violations taking place every day as a consequence of cobalt mining."[158] The Congolese government threatened legal action against Apple in 2024,[159] later alleging they had evidence linking Apple to conflict areas.[160]